The refrigerator door was open in the brightly lit kitchen. Milk spilled on the linoleum tiles. A toddler stared at the milk draining from the carton. “Miwk,” the toddler said, and put his hand in it. Then he scampered across the room avoiding most of the cockroaches but crushing on one or two as they shot over to where the milk was spilled.
Three birds chirped away from their perch on a power-line. Sharp branches with no leaves scratched the burnt dusk sky. Marv observed this though the rusty bars on his window. A spider waited in a dusty web. A farmer, carrying two large metal canisters, walked with his dog across a bridge toward town. Marv tried to contact the dog with his mind but the dog was oblivious, sniffing the paths covered with fall leaves and hearing sounds from deep within the forest nearby. Marv glanced around his cell. The light was failing but that didn’t matter because there really was nothing to see. A toilet. A mattress full of straw on the filthy cement floor. A wall of bars that faced an empty hallway. Marv sunk away from the window. His eyes gradually adjusted to the darkening twilight. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something dart passed down the hallway but he knew the jail-keeper and his dog had gone home for supper long ago. Still, Marv went over to the bars and peered down the dark hall. There appeared to be something glowing down at the other end of the empty hallway. The glowing thing appeared to move slightly back and forth. Marv was mesmerized.
A stalk of hay hung out of Josie’s mouth and she chewed the end of it. It had been pretty bitter but now most of the taste was gone and she chewed it just for the sensation. The bus pulled out of Dairyville and headed on down the highway as rain clouds darkened the fields and droplets landed on the tinted windows. She could see the beast far off, just the tips of its horns and its mohawk visible now and again, bobbing and dipping in the waves of the green cornfield ocean. She could just barely hear him wailing, wining, barking. Calling out. She turned away from the window and took the hay out of her mouth. With the tip she traced a pentagram on the back of the plastic seat in front of her. She sighed, taking off her straw hat and running her fingers through her dirty locks of hair. Putting her hat back on she reached down into the duffel bag between her boots and put her hand on the silver dagger. It was still sticky with blood.